Hurricane Mitch, Alemán, and Other Disasters for Women in Nicaragua

Hurricane Mitch caused unprecedented destruction when it swept through Nicaragua and Honduras in October 1998. Official reports estimated that 3,332 were reported killed or missing and an estimated $1.5 billion damages were caused in Nicaragua alone. Though Mitch did not cause Nicaragua's impoverishment, the severity of its destruction revealed a deeper crisis that has been troubling Nicaragua's economy for over a decade—an economic crisis aggravated by heavy external debts and structural adjustment policies. Using feminist analysis, the case of Nicaragua is explored to consider the effects of natural disasters from a global perspective and to rethink the long-term merits of structural adjustment and foreign aid.     

Jealousy,intimate abusiveness,and intrusiveness

An examination of self-report scales of 160 men and 76 of their partners or former partners found significant correlations between jealousy and abusiveness (for coupled dyads) or intrusiveness (for separated dyads). Jealousy was related to borderline personality and to MCMI-II measures of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Rejection sensitivity leading to pathological acts, such as abusiveness and intrusiveness, is seen as originating in early insecure attachment and exposure to shaming experiences.     

Models of adulthood: An ethnographic study of an adolescent peer group

In this article a middle class adolescent peer group is studied in a community setting using ethnographic techniques. The purpose of the study is to describe the group's relationship to adults and to uncover the adult reference group after which the group modeled itself. Although this group was organized to help poor people in the United States and abroad and had extensive contact with adults who could be described as change agents working to close the economic gap between rich and poor, this group modeled itself after middle class adult managers. The youths were attracted to the change agent adults only in so far as they satisfied their desire for equal status interaction with adults. Attempts by the group to establish closer contact with their adult models were in conflict with their desire to maintain autonomy from adult domination. The concluding section compares the findings of this study to two ethnographic studies of adolescent groups that used secondary school sites.Received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Main research interest is applying ethnographic techniques to the study of educational process. Currently studying the urban principalship with a grant from the Spencer Foundation.     

Self-reports of Police Speeding Stops by Race: Results from the North Carolina Reverse Record Check Survey

Survey reports of police stops and driving behavior are a potential methodology for examining the magnitude and prevalence of the “Driving While Black” phenomena. However, estimates of the magnitude or correlates of racial disparity in police stops from self-reported survey data are potentially compromised if the accuracy of self-reports of police stops and driving behavior differ by race. We report on the results of a reverse record check survey in which we directly assess the degree and consequences of differences by race in self-reports of police stops. In our sample of drivers who had been cited for speeding in the preceding year, we found that 77% of the White respondents and 71% of the African American respondents admitted to being stopped. While both groups underreport stops, African Americans do so at a higher rate. This finding is consistent with many past studies which report stronger social desirability effects on survey responses among African Americans. Thus, survey data will tend to underestimate the magnitude of the “Driving While Black” phenomena.